What I learned after 200+ applications to my tech mentoring scheme for young people in Iraq, Iran and Syria
Last year, I visited Iraq for the first time in a long time. My cousins — who I remembered as boisterous kids obsessed with finding ice cream — had grown into sharp, curious teenagers who wanted to talk about Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and blockchain. Their English was excellent. Their ambitions were enormous. One wanted to build a cryptocurrency for Iraq so the economy wouldn’t have to depend on foreign banks or collapse every time there was civil unrest.
I left feeling genuinely hopeful.
A year later, when those same cousins started weighing up whether to study computer science at university, I looked into what their courses actually covered. It wasn’t good, more suited to the tech landscape of the 90s than the 2020s. These were too bright to waste three years on outdated teaching. So I did what anyone would do: I posted on Twitter.
Fifty-four likes and a flood of messages later, Level Up was born.
The numbers
- 1,379 website views in August and September
- 200+ applications from mentees and mentors over three weeks
- 47 mentees made it through the first round; 18 were invited to interview
- 16 mentee interviews and 20 mentor interviews conducted
- 14 mentor-mentee pairs introduced to one another
I’d originally set myself a target of 10 pairs by December. I was genuinely nervous about hitting it. I needn’t have worried.
What I learned about mentees
Applicants ranged from 13 to 38 years old, and getting people to sign up was easier than expected. Re:coded bootcamp shared it through their network (three of the final mentees are alumni), local Facebook groups were surprisingly powerful, and a handful of key influencers amplified it significantly.
The gender balance, however, was stark. From what I can tell from applicants’ names, the vast majority were male — something I’ll need to actively address next time, with better outreach and proper demographic data in the form itself. The silver lining: the few women who did apply were exceptional and made it through to interview.
Most applicants were from Iraq, though after digging into the data, many were actually Syrian refugees living there — a distinction I’ll track separately going forward. There was just one applicant from Iran, which I traced back to the site being inaccessible without a VPN. I simply hadn’t thought of that.
One pattern that stood out: most applicants weren’t used to selling themselves. There are so few structured opportunities for young people in these regions that the idea of writing a compelling application is genuinely unfamiliar. Lots of one-sentence answers to questions asking for 300 words. I need a better design solution here, something that guides people through it more intuitively.
Plagiarism also cropped up more than I expected. I can understand why. If your English isn’t strong, copying from a blog post about mentoring feels like a reasonable workaround. But it made genuine assessment hard, and in one case I was genuinely fooled. Interviews became essential as a result, even though I hadn’t planned for them originally.
Those interviews, though, they were the highlight of the entire project. Frankly, the highlight of my year. The intelligence, drive and warmth of the young people I spoke to was something else. In one interview the electricity cut out mid-conversation. In another, someone had a friend whispering English translations from off-screen; we ended up switching to Kurdish, which only reminded me how terrible my own Kurdish has become. But we got through it, and it made the whole thing feel more real, not less.
A lot of mentees surprised me by asking for business mentorship alongside technical skills, pragmatic in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Several who were interested in AI or ML asked instead for full-stack mentors to maximise their employment options. I found that quietly impressive.
I also ended up broadening the scope more than I’d planned. Some mentees didn’t have obvious mentor matches, so I went looking. I told myself I’d keep things focused. Then I met them, and I couldn’t say no. I now have a cybersecurity pair, a water and sanitation pair, and a physics-focused mentee about to be matched. Some rules are worth breaking.
What I learned about mentors
Every mentor who applied was exceptional. I’m lucky to have the network I do. Civic tech people, folks from Newspeak House, and others who found it through retweets. Special mention to Infinity Works, whose company Slack apparently did a brilliant job promoting it, four of their people applied.
For future rounds, I’ll need to gather more detail about mentors’ skills and preferences at the application stage, so that matching doesn’t rely quite so heavily on my own memory and notes. I also accepted two US-based mentors to make specific matches work, which opens up the possibility of intentionally going global next time.
What I learned about process
After 36 interviews, faces blur. I remember people visually more than anything else, so photos in future applications would help enormously. I also need to be more disciplined about notes, written immediately after each interview, no exceptions.
I set up a Stacker portal built on Airtable for mentors and mentees to log their sessions over the next six months. It came together faster than I expected. The tools available now are remarkable. Evaluation surveys are next on the list: baseline, midpoint, and end. If anyone has experience designing good ones, please get in touch.
Overall, it’s been a lot. But I can’t overstate how excited I am to see where everyone is in six months. My day job in fact-checking can feel abstract, impact is hard to see. Level Up has been the antidote to that. I know exactly who I’m helping and how. That clarity is a rare thing, and I don’t take it lightly.
If you’d like to apply to mentor the next cohort, you can do so at helpmelevelup.org/apply — the next batch starts in March 2021 (assuming the next six months aren’t a complete disaster 😄)
Mevan Babakar 